


The One Where Dinner is Ruined

by orphan_account



Category: letsplay, markiplier - Fandom, youtube - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Markiplier - Freeform, TW: Hospitals, markiplier imagines, markiplier preferences, tw: car crash, tw: medical personnel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 09:06:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7795735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You were going to be late, you knew of that. The only thing you could think about was dinner getting cold. Your car was totaled, you’re pretty sure you had broken your left hand, and you couldn’t get the sound of metal crushing against metal out of your head – but goddamnit, the dinner he worked so hard on would be ruined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One Where Dinner is Ruined

You were going to be late, you knew of that. The only thing you could think about was dinner getting cold. Your car was totaled, you’re pretty sure you had broken your left hand, and you couldn’t get the sound of metal crushing against metal out of your head – but goddamnit, the dinner he worked so hard on would be ruined.

“Ma'am?” a voice from somewhere to your left asked. “Ma'am, can you hear me?” It was muddled, almost as if he were speaking to you underwater.

“Yeah,” you nodded, careful not to make any erratic movements. You’re pretty sure you could feel every part of your body still, but there was no way to know.

“The paramedics are on their way; I’m on the phone with 911 right now. Can you move at all?”

“Yeah, I think I can. I’m pretty sure I can feel everything. I think I broke my left hand, though. Should I get out? Should I try and get out?” your voice becomes increasingly panicked as the realization sets in.

“No, no,” the man says, trying to open your door. “Don’t move. Your door is crushed. I can’t get it open. I can’t get her door open - her door is crushed. Can they bring something to get her out? She won’t be able to get out if they don’t have anything.”

It’s hard to decipher who the man is talking to – the 911 dispatcher or you – so you choose to remain silent. You look around you, at the deployed airbags, the smoke rising from the engine, the broken glass on every surface of the interior of the car - almost not believing that you were the person in the driver’s seat.

You imagined what it must’ve looked like to the man on the phone. You were in between two cars – the van you had rear-ended and the BMW that had rear-ended you, and your front end was smashed so that you were only a foot and a half away from the bumper of the vehicle you had flown into. You couldn’t see through your windshield, save for the very top-left corner of the glass where it wasn’t shattered. Whenever you moved, you could hear shards of glass crunch everywhere around you.

Your chest, ribs, and lungs hurt where the airbag had erupted, the woven fabric of the seatbelt now engrained in your skin. You were terrified. Every passing moment in that car felt like an eternity, and although you could hear sirens in the distance, the thought of never escaping this metal box around you seeped into your panicked brain.

“I need to get out of here,” you tapped the glass of your window – somehow still intact – to get the man’s attention. “Excuse me?!” you shout, frantic. “HEY! I need to get out of here!”

You move to unbuckle yourself from the seatbelt, but you can’t get your hands to synch up with your brain. The only option you have left is to cry, your sudden alertness of the situation causing you to breathe heavily and bite your bottom lip.

“Don’t move,” the man says. “Don’t move, they’re almost here. They can’t get around the traffic, but they’ll be here as soon as they can. Are you okay?”

“No,” you shake your head back and forth, glass underneath your feet crunching with the erratic movements of your torso. “No. Can you stay here? Please?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” the man says. “I’ll stay right here until they get you out. What’s your name?”

You introduce yourself, but you’re not focused enough to catch his name. He stands next to your window, talking to you through the window until the sirens come closer and closer.

“What happened?” you ask him, the tears still streaming down your face.

“It’s a multi-car accident,” he explains. “I don’t know what happened, but a semi veered off the road and caused a pile-up. You’re right in the middle of it – you smashed into my delivery van after I crashed into the car in front of me, so forth and so on. There are three more cars behind you. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah,” you nod. “Are you okay? You didn’t break anything?”

“No,” the man shakes his head, “no, my van was big enough to stop anything major from happening to me. You said your left hand might be broken? Anything else?”

“No,” you respond. “No, I don’t think so. Can you tell them that I’m stuck? That I need to get out? When they get here, at least?”

“They already know you need help out,” the man places his palm on the window. “I told them you needed help getting out. I’ll explain everything to them, okay? You don’t need to do anything but tell them where you’re hurt.”

“Thank you,” you say to him, looking up at him through the glass. You begin to tear up again, and then you remind yourself to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. “He was making broasted chicken,” you laugh, shaking your head.

“What?”

“Nothing,” you smile, wiping the tears away from your eyes with your right hand. “I’m late for dinner, is all.”

—

“…is at a stand-still due to a multi-car pile-up. Please use caution as you approach the area, and if you are able, seek an alternate route. Emergency personnel are on scene, but it looks like it’ll take a significant amount of time to clear the area. Many people are severely injured – some already deemed critical – and first-responders ask that you give them the time and space needed to clear the accident,” the nasally voice on the radio drones.

“Shit,” Mark pounds his fists on the steering wheel, gritting his teeth. “Pick up, pick up, pick up,” he hangs up and clicks on your name again, for what’s probably the twentieth time within two minutes.

You were forty-five minutes late for dinner. If there was one thing Mark knew about you, it was that you were _never_ late. Most of your anxiety stemmed from timing issues, so you were always _at least_ ten minutes early to each and every place you went. After neglecting to answer your phone five times, Mark got into his car and started to drive the route from your hairdresser’s salon back to your apartment.

He knew that it took about two hours for you to get your hair done and about a half hour to drive back from the salon, give or take traffic. If he accounted for everything, you would’ve been gone for four hours – _maximum_. And you would’ve let him know if you were going to be late for the dinner he had planned. You were so excited when he ran the idea by you – a home-cooked meal out on the deck with a fire going as you both watched the sunset together.

“Answer your fucking phone!” Mark screams to no one, redialing your number again. “ _Fuck_!” he spits, laying his hand on the horn and biting at the skin around his nails. Traffic was backed up for miles, you weren’t answering your phone, you were late for dinner without any warning – he knew, despite not wanting to believe it – that you were in trouble.

Glancing around, seeing no way out of the traffic, he laid on his horn again, smashing his open palm against the arm rest.

—

“Hold still for me, okay?” a firefighter yells at you through the glass. They’d tried to get your door open using a crowbar, and when that wasn’t doing the trick, they had moved to the Jaws of Life.

You nodded in response, stiffening your body so that you wouldn’t move an inch. You’d never seen anything like it before – so many people asking you questions, wanting to know if you were okay, telling you exactly what they were doing to your car so you wouldn’t panic – the extent of it all nearly took your breath away.

With a hiss and a pop, your door was suddenly open and pried away from its hinges. You gasped and leaned away from the outside, your elbow resting against a pile of glass shards from your windshield. An EMT immediately came to your side, her eyes scanning over you for any signs of trauma.

“My name is Holly and I’m going to take care of you today, okay?” her smile puts you at ease, although the frantic activity all around you made your heart pound in your chest. “Are you hurt anywhere?”

“I – ” you pause, unbuckling your seatbelt, “I think I broke my left hand. I think – I think it got crushed in between the steering wheel and my chest when I crashed.”

“Anything else?” the paramedic asks, gently holding your left wrist. As she inspects your hand, you wince, knowing for sure that the bones beneath your skin were shattered. “We’ve definitely got a metacarpal fracture. Multiple, it feels like,” she says to a bearded man in the same uniform she’s sporting.

“My chest is really tight – I’ve never had airbags go off before – it was all so quick, I – I couldn’t – I couldn’t even stop. It was like a nanosecond. I blinked and then I blinked again and my car was totaled,” your eyes swell with tears again as Holly assesses the bruises on your chest, running her fingers over the area where the fabric of the seatbelt had imprinted on your skin.

“It’s okay, honey,” she soothes you. “You couldn’t help it. You were smooshed in the middle of a long line of cars! Does it hurt when you breathe?”

“A little,” you nod. Your hands begin to shake again, along with your teeth and lips.

“Any neck pain?”

“Just a little – from whiplash maybe? I can move it. It doesn’t hurt to move it.”

“Okay, okay. That’s good, babe. That’s really good. I’m going to put this neck brace on you before we move too much, just to be sure, yeah?” you nod as Holly secures your neck. “Can you stand up for me?” she grabs your biceps, helping you ease out of the car.

Standing up, nothing hurts. However, you can’t stop shaking, almost as if your limbs are made of Jell-O – the green kind, the extra jiggly kind, the kind that always made you laugh as a kid when your older brother slurped some up from his spoon. You lean on the kind paramedic for support, ease into her touch as she guides you to the stretcher.

“You’re good, you’re good,” she smiles, walking backwards. “You’re so lucky. Just a broken hand? Maybe some whiplash and bruising from the seatbelt and airbags? We can fix that. We can definitely get you feeling better,” she pats your lap, winking.

“Thank you,” you smile meekly, adjusting yourself on the stretcher. “Wh-why am I so shaky? I feel nauseous.”

“Probably just shock,” the man behind the stretcher says. He comes around to the front with a neck brace and a smile. “I’m Nick. We’ll get you into the ambulance and do a few tests. You’ve got some cuts on you from the glass, but other than your hand and the scrapes, can you feel anywhere else that’s hurting?”

“No,” you attempt to shake your head, but stop when the brace impedes any movement. “A little tight to breathe,” you look around as the male EMT begins to move the stretcher towards the ambulance up the way – the amount of glass and pieces of car on the freeway makes you close your eyes.

“You were alone in the car, right?” Nick asks, positioning the stretcher so that you were aligned with the back of the ambulance. “No babies or children?”

“Just me,” you respond. When Nick and Holly hoist you up into the back of the truck, you wince at the jerky movements. “But my bo-my boyfriend is probably wondering where I’m at. I got my hair done and was supposed to be home way earlier,” you tear up again, willing yourself to pull it together for these strangers. “He made me dinner,” you smirk, moving your right hand to wipe away your ever-present tears.

“Aww, honey,” Holly frowns, brushing your freshly-dyed hair off of your face. “It’s okay. We’ll get you good as new in no time. Just have to do some tests and run you to the hospital for some x-rays, okay?”

“Yeah,” you nod, and you can’t help but feel like a total fool. One, because you’re crying over the fact that you’re missing a romantic dinner that your boyfriend made for you and two, because you’re doing it in front of complete strangers.

“Does your boyfriend know you’re okay, sugar?” Nick asks as he wraps tape around your IV while Holly records your information on a new file.

“No,” you shake your head, once again forgetting that your neck has been made immobile. “I couldn’t find my phone after the crash. I keep it in the cup holder in the front, but it flew somewhere and I couldn’t see it. It’s on silent, too. Because I’m an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot,” Nick laughs, patting your leg once his part of your exam was done. “Tell you what, I’ll go look for it while Holly finishes up your tests. What does it look like?”

“Thank you so much,” you smile. “It’s an iPhone – gold with a clear case with flowers on it.”

“On it,” he says as he jumps out of the ambulance, making his way to your car.

—

Mark doesn’t know what to do. The only thing that makes him feel productive is honking his horn continually while he dials and redials your phone number to no avail. He knows it’s not helping, but images of you lying dead in the middle of the highway keep creeping through his mind, and the only thing that makes him feel better is the beginning of your voicemail saying “ _Hi, you’ve reached…”_

“Motherfucking shit tits,” he tries to weave a bit onto the shoulder, wondering if he’s any closer to the accident. With the windows of his car down, he can smell the faint traces of smoke in the air, yet still can’t see anything.

He feels so out-of-his-skin that it’s almost like he’s watching himself from above. He can see the panicked look in his eyes, he can imagine how crazy his behavior must be to others. His heart pounds in his chest with every passing moment, and it’s all he can do not to call his mother and scream his head off – not because he’s angry, but because he’s – well, he’s scared.

He thinks about how beautiful you are, how he wants to spend the rest of his life with you. He was gone for a week to New York City last month, and all he could think of was you. He hated waking up alone in his hotel room, hated that meetings kept him from texting you all day, how he couldn’t rest his hand on the inside of your thigh while sitting next to you at dinner.

He remembers this morning and how gorgeous you looked standing in the bright sun. He stared at you for a long while, going unnoticed as you looked across the valley and into the city, sipping from a mug he had bought for you just because it reminded him of you. He was confused as to why you chose him – why someone so perfect and had so much to offer the world would choose to be with him, a raven-haired boy from Ohio who didn’t know his own worth.

He remembered how you giggled, full of bubbles and a certain sense of innocence as he peppered your cheeks and forehead with loud, sloppy kisses. You shrieked when he nearly caused you to spill your coffee, batting him away from you to save your precious beverage.

He loved making you laugh. He knew he’d never tire of it, but sitting here, in this standstill line of cars, he wished he would’ve made you laugh _more_. He went crazy for how it overflowed through your chest, starting in your stomach and sparkling out through your lips like fireworks. A sound so perfect he wished he could bottle it, saving it for rainy days when he couldn’t hold you the way he wanted to.

“ _Goddamnit!”_ he screams, white-knuckling the steering wheel.

—

“I feel so stupid,” you chuckle while Holly takes your blood pressure.

“Don’t,” she shakes her head, writing numbers down. “You literally could not help it. Did you see how many cars were lined up? You were just at the wrong place at the wrong time, baby.”

You’re comforted by these two paramedics and their pet names for you. It’s almost enjoyable, how they help you forget about everything going on and the fact that you’ve got a hand that was crushed to smithereens. Holly distracts you by asking about where you get your hair done, commenting on how lovely your new color is.

“Is your breathing getting easier?” she asks, monitoring your heart rate.

“Yeah,” you nod, watching your heartbeat on the screen. “My chest isn’t as tight.”

“I think you were panicking a little when we got to you, but you look good now,” she brushes your hair away from your face once more before writing something down.

“Found it!” Nick yells into the ambulance as he steps up into the truck. The surprise of his voice in the small space makes you jump. “It was underneath the car mat on your passenger side. It says you’ve got 53 missed calls from Mark – I take it that’s your boyfriend?”

“Yeah,” you laugh, grabbing your phone from his hand. “What gave it away?”

“The poop emoji next to his name,” Nick winks at you while Holly laughs.

Mark calls again – for the 54th time – and you happily answer it.

“I’m okay,” you say before he can get a word in. “I’m okay, don’t worry, I’m okay.”

“Holy fucking shit,” he breathes deeply, a rush of air through his lips sounding like wind on your side of the call. “Fuck, _fuck_ , I was so worried. You have no idea. I was so goddamn worried. Where are you?! _Where are you?!”_

“I’m on the highway,” you explain, not bothering to wipe the tears that are flowing freely from your eyes. “I’m in an ambulance, but we hav-haven’t left yet,” you hiccup over your breath, relieved to hear Mark’s voice after everything that had happened.

“Oh my god, baby. _Baby_. What happened? Are you okay? What happened?” and you can tell that he’s crying, but you don’t say anything about it.

“I was in the middle of the pile-up. Did you hear about the pile-up? You must’ve,” you sniff, silently thanking Nick as he uses a sterile cotton pad to wipe away your tears.

“Yeah, yeah,” Mark says. “What’s wrong? What happened? Are you okay?”

“Breathe, baby,” you chuckle. “I’m fine. I just have really bad whiplash and they’re pretty sure I shattered my left hand. But I’m fine. Seriously. I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, but –” he gulps, his tears stuck in his throat. “God, I was so fucking worried. _So_ fucking worried. Should I come to you? Are you in pain? Do you need me? Where should I go right now?” He’s so frantic, you almost can’t understand anything coming out of his mouth. “I’m on the highway. I can smell smoke but I can’t see anything yet.”

You ask Holly and Nick which hospital you’ll be going to and relay the information to Mark, telling him to get off at the nearest exit and take the backroads. “Nobody’s sure when it’ll be cleared,” you explain. “But we’re going to drive around it and get to the hospital as quick as we can, so we’ll just meet you there, okay?”

“Okay, okay,” Mark responds, clearing his throat. “Okay.”

“Mark?”

“What?”

“I love you,” you tear up again as Nick closes you and Holly into the back of the ambulance.

“I love you so much. _So_ much.”

—

Unsurprisingly, you beat Mark to the hospital. You text him with your good hand, letting you know that you made it there safe and were going to get x-rays taken of your hand. The nurses informed you of the steps he had to take to find you when he got to the hospital, laughing at the string of emojis he sent in response.

You _had_ broken your hand – a series of complicated fractures that would require surgery the following week, but for now, you’d be set up in a cast. You picked blue, your favorite color, and went through the events that lead you here with your doctor as he wrapped you up.

“Baby,” Mark stood in the doorway. “Oh, Jesus.”

“Hey,” you smile from your seated position, beckoning him with your right hand. “C'mere, you.”

The doctor gives the two of you a moment alone, letting you hug each other tightly in peace. Mark sobs into your shoulder as you grasp the back of his t-shirt, whispering how much you loved him through a curtain of tears.

“I was so scared. I was so, _so_ scared,” he cries, kissing the crown of your head. “I kn-knew something was wrong when you were so late. You’re ne-never late. I just – I knew – I _knew_ something horrible had happened and I felt so hel-helpess,” he buries his face in the crook of your neck once more, his tears wetting your hair.

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” you reassure him, your hand running up and down his back.

“Don’t ever do that to me again, okay? I was screaming on the freeway! I was terrified!”

“I’m so sorry, Mark. I’m sorry, baby. I love you. I’m sorry I ruined your beautiful dinner.”

“Fuck dinner,” Mark laughs. “I love you so much, I couldn’t give less of a shit about that dinner. I’ll make you a million more dinners as long as it means you’re okay.”

“Well, I don’t plan on _ever_ doing this again, so you’ve got yourself a deal,” you kiss him square on the lips when he pulls away from your grasp, mussing up the loose hair on the top of his head.

“Wait, you’re getting a blue cast?” he asks, pointing at your hand.

“Yeah,” you nod. “Blue’s my favorite color.”

“You’re getting a _blue_ cast when _pink_ was an option?” he scoffs, rolling his eyes and running his fingers through his hair. “I can’t believe I came all this way just so you could get a _blue cast_.”

“Shut up, you poophead!” you kick at him, sticking your tongue out.

“Aww, I’m just kidding,” he smiles, stepping towards you again. Placing a gentle arm around your shoulders, he pulls you to him and kisses the crown of your head. “But seriously, don’t ever pull this shit again, okay? I love you, but I don’t think I can ever worry about you like that again. You’ve filled your quota for your entire life.”

“Got it,” you wink up at him, pursing your lips for another kiss. “But blue is still a superior cast color, and I’m offended that you think otherwise.”

“Okay, Doc!” Mark shouts loud enough for the entire hospital floor to hear. “We need you back in here, she’s going through some sort of psychosis. We’ll need to put her on some heavy drugs… _stat!”_


End file.
